3dfx + swShader

[r21vo]

Originally posted by Nightbird

Nobody is interested to program the perfect utility ?

3danalyzer sources ain't available, are they?

[Nightbird]

They are not.

[r21vo]

found out why.. :

http://www.tommti-systems.de/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=82&highlight=sources

No. It's to dangerous, because it could be used as a cheating tool for benchmarks, which would bring Futuremark and other benchmark companies into trouble and also as an cheating tool for multiplayer games if you create something like a wall hack....

[Nick]

Hi all,

I'm the developer of swShader. It's great to see your interest for my software!

I'd like to add that swShader is still under heavy development. Quite recently I managed to run Unreal Tournament 2004 completely in software. But the performance is not yet optimal. I will first add all features, including programmable shaders, and make sure they run very fast. I still have tons of ideas to make it faster but I can't risk the trouble of optimizing too soon.

Anyway, with processors getting more powerful every day, I see a nice future for this technology...

[Nick]

Originally posted by r21vo

found out why.. :

http://www.tommti-systems.de/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=82&highlight=sources

No. It's to dangerous, because it could be used as a cheating tool for benchmarks, which would bring Futuremark and other benchmark companies into trouble and also as an cheating tool for multiplayer games if you create something like a wall hack....

That's nonsense really. Benchmarks can't be influenced this way because graphics card drivers already have access to all software and hardware processing. And the code for a 'wall hack' is really trivial anyway...

[Nightbird]

@ Nick
Really many thanks to you to have answered to my email

[r21vo]

Originally posted by Nick

Hi all,

I'm the developer of swShader. It's great to see your interest for my software!

I'd like to add that swShader is still under heavy development. Quite recently I managed to run Unreal Tournament 2004 completely in software. But the performance is not yet optimal. I will first add all features, including programmable shaders, and make sure they run very fast. I still have tons of ideas to make it faster but I can't risk the trouble of optimizing too soon.

Anyway, with processors getting more powerful every day, I see a nice future for this technology...

hey, nice to see you here!

I would like to ask you is it easy for you to make some of 3d oparations use gfx power? I mean making option where you can select which one do you wan to use - software of hardware for some certain 3d operation.

[Nick]

Originally posted by r21vo
I would like to ask you is it easy for you to make some of 3d oparations use gfx power? I mean making option where you can select which one do you wan to use - software of hardware for some certain 3d operation.

It brings some inefficiencies to switch between software and hardware processing several times per frame. Every time I need to access the color buffer, I have to 'lock' it so nothing else is drawing while I'm working with it. So this means I have to wait for the hardware to finish its operations before I can do some software rendering. Also, the hardware requires some setup time to start rendering, so these delays can become quite significant. Exactly how bad it is I don't know, but knowledgable people have told me it can decimate performance severely.

Another option would be to do the software rendering in a separate buffer and blend that with the hardware rendered part, so the hardware never has to be interrupted.

Either way, it's not easy to support. It's already very hard to manage everything in software, so mixing with some hardware processing is going to be even harder. But if you have some suggestion to make this simpler please let me know!

[r21vo]

my idea was to let gfx do all operations except some pixel shaders and maybe dot3 bumpmaping or smth like that. Pixel shaders/bumpmaping can be done after all other operations (i guess bumpmapping sould be done when rendering textures, but pixel shaders could be done after and blended into picture)? If it's possible then you have to switch only one time between software and hardware.
(I'm quite a novice in 3d programming world actually )

I would like to know how much optimized shShader is (how much optimizations could be done) - is there any mmx/sse/3dnow optimzations? Or maybe something is done in asm?

The main reason why i feel desperate need for this is that our beloved 3dfx cards doesn't support pixel shaders and some other advanced 3d features - so developing these features in software could give us again new things to test, to discuss and think about. Other reason is that there are many powerful cards out there which doesn't support some features and it would be very interesting to see how software can make things better

[Nick]

Originally posted by r21vo
I would like to know how much optimized shShader is (how much optimizations could be done) - is there any mmx/sse/3dnow optimzations? Or maybe something is done in asm?

It's full of assembly code. This page should give you an introduction to the used technologies: http://sw-shader.sourceforge.net/technology.html

[r21vo]

whoo, you have optimized swShader very much! actually a little bit sad, because what still can be done to make swShader run faster?

[Nick]

Originally posted by r21vo

whoo, you have optimized swShader very much! actually a little bit sad, because what still can be done to make swShader run faster?

Actually a lot. At the moment I'm focussing on supporting every DirectX 9 feature, while performance comes second. So even though I already use quite advanced technology, it's not tweaked for best performance yet. I also currently have nothing for overdraw reduction or early culling. So things could become quite a lot faster for future versions.

[r21vo]

i'm glad to hear that seems that you are the only developer of swShader, right?

[perer]

Are you thinking of using the same technique Gigapixel/PowerVR used for overdraw??? Because if you use these overdraw tecniques you'd could be looking at a increase of 2-3x, dependant of the situation the game is in.

[Nick]

Originally posted by r21vo

i'm glad to hear that seems that you are the only developer of swShader, right?

Yes, I've started working on swShader in 2003, and worked on it in all my free time. It's finally starting to take shape and I truely believe this year it will reach commercial quality.